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Building a Resilient Future

When we speak of building a resilient future, we have to look at the environment in which we live and examine the state of that environment. What are the living conditions for humans and other beings that we share the planet with? The Niger Delta is a deeply polluted environment, a deeply degraded territory, one of the worst polluted places on the planet.

Researches have confirmed this sad reality. The Environmental Assessment of Ogoni land issued by United Nations Environment Program in 2021 clearly shows the desperate pollution of Ogoni land — the land, the water, and the air. In some places, hydrocarbons have penetrated the soil up to 5 meters. By the time the cleanup started, pollution had sunk as deep as 10 meters.

In 2023 the Bayesian State Oil and Environment Commission, issued a report entitled An Environmental Genocide, Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria. Now, when we speak of environmental genocide, we have to understand this by looking at what genocide itself means. Genocide is an intentional attack and annihilation of a people, ethnic cleansing. An environmental genocide can also be termed ecocide. It happens when there’s an intentional and persistent destruction of a particular environment, as has been the case of the Niger Delta over the last 68 years.

The Niger Delta is a territory that the inhabitants are literally the living dead due to horrific environmental degradation. Consider Bayelsa State that has 40% of mangrove forests gone and there is a 1.5 barrels of crude oil spilled per capita. Imagine that about 14 million cubic meters of natural gas is flared every day at 17 facilities in Bayelsa State alone releasing toxic elements into the air and causing cancers, breathing illnesses and acid rain. Oil related contaminants such as chromium are present in groundwater at a level 1000 times beyond the World Health Organization limit, and then shockingly, total petroleum hydrocarbons exceed safe levels by a factor of 1 million. Think about that.

Now our topic is on building a resilient future. What is resilience? Other words for resilience could be toughness, strength, tenacity, power, persistence. Now, when you are resilient, it doesn’t mean you are merely tough to receive any kind of beating. That’s not resiliency, just being helpless, but strong. No, resilience is a situation where you equipped to overcome hazards, where your vulnerability is removed, and disasters are not the norm. It’s a situation where what you lost is restored and what was damaged is paid for. To build a resilient future, we have to map that future. We have to change our imaginaries.We have to determine what the future would look like and then we build towards attaining that future. We need to be passionate about this. We need to be conscious of where we are, and act to get to where we want to be.

We are considering building a resilient future by integrating climate action and community empowerment. Now, what are the key climate actions that are being taken globally today. One is adaptation, and second is mitigation.

Simply put, adaptation means adapting to changing situations, making accommodation with what is coming at you, while mitigation means taking action to stop the change from happening or to reduce the change that is occurring. When we speak about climate change, sometimes our focus is on the carbon in the atmosphere, but we must also speak about the carbon in the ground that is being extracted and burnt to put that carbon in the atmosphere. If we keep looking only into the skies and forget to look at the ground, then of course, we will not really tackle the problem that affects our people on a daily basis. And so we have to look at where the rain started beating us. That deluge drenched us when the first oil well was drilled and exports began in the late 1950s at Otuabagi in the Oloibiri oil field. Now those early oil wells have since been abandoned. They were abandoned in 1970s but they’ve never been decommissioned. The area has never been cleaned up, and as we speak, they are still contaminating the environment, and this happens because of lax regulation. Lax regulation is not accidental, just like ecocide is not happenstance. It’s all about profit for international oil companies and their Nigerian counterparts.

The Niger Delta is a sacrifice zone where anything goes and the people just manage and struggle to survive. Those of us who live in the area don’t have to be told about the level of pollution here. The reports are there, the Ogoni report, the Bayelsa report, even the Niger Delta Environment Survey that Shell commissioned in the 90s, but never released, and many others including the one by Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Center, which studied blood samples of women from Otuabagi area, and found them all loaded with hydrocarbons. people are literally the walking dead.

In November to December 2021 over a period of six weeks, there was an oil blowout on the Santa Barbara river, a well run by Aiteo. That spill all happened in public view. The polluters and NOSDRA claimed that a mere 3,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled. Imagine a spill from a well head at high pressure for six weeks.Experts estimate that about 500,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled in that incident. And how about Ororo-1 oil well off the coast of Awoye in Ondo State? That oil well blew up 5 years ago and is still burning and spilling as we speak — a clear indication of systemic neglect. How can we be serious about climate action when we have an oil well burning and spilling crude for 5 years? It’s an open sore, burning, spilling in broad daylight, destroying livelihoods of communities along the coastline of the Niger Delta, especially at the Awoye area. In sum, the Niger Delta is not just a sacrifice zone, it’s a zone that holds the history of colonial exploitation, extractivism, expropriation and extermination of the people on a daily and continuous basis.

How can we speak of community empowerment in this sort of environment? What would community empowerment look like? What is community empowerment when perpetrators of environmental degradation are abandoning their responsibilities in the so called divestment moves? What kind of transition would that be? If a polluter leaves the pollution, hands it over to his allies or other companies that they set up, and moves deeper offshore to pollute from offshore and maybe turn the offshore into a situation that is akin to what they’ve left in our onshore the Niger Delta is not only suffering from loss and damage. It is a lost and damaged territory. It is almost a lost and damaged, totally damaged, irreversibly damaged territory.

And our work in community. If we want to do real community empowerment, we must take real climate action to avert a continuation of the sacrifice of the zone. And there are things we must do. Number one, there has to be a clear environmental audit across the entire Niger Delta, what has gone wrong? Who is responsible, and how can people live in that kind of society? Environment number two, health audit. What has been killing our people?

How come we don’t have adults? Children have become adults and we don’t have elderly people. Number three, remediation, we’re not only going to audit the environment, or did the health. There must be a cleanup of the entire Niger Delta. There must be reparations. There must be payment for the damage that has been done to lives and to the environment.

Gas flaring must be stopped and halted. It’s an illegal activity. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s crime against the environment, against Mother Earth. It must be stopped. The so called divestment must be started and reversed, it is time to empower the communities and take real climate action by bringing into play community control, renewable energy provision, supporting food sovereignty, building resilient infrastructure. Still speaking about building resilience through climate reparations, it’s a time to right the wrongs in terms of energy provision, United States a very challenged environment, and electricity penetration is very low, and so to reach hard to reach communities, there must be community controlled renewable energy. In other words, we have to bring energy democracy to the Niger Delta, so that the people who only see glimpses of light from gas flares would now have electricity with which to engage in productive activities and to light up the territory. Now, the land, the water and the air has been so contaminated, if gas flaring is stopped, pollution is cleaned up, then the people have a chance to engage in agriculture in a way that is resilient and a way that helps tackle global warming, and that would be having food sovereignty with a key focus on agroecology, cultivating crops according in line and in harmony with nature. 

And then finally, one clear action that must be taken to build resilience is to encourage community democracy and have community development agencies that are truly driven by the people and not manipulated through divide and rule and rule system by either the oil corporations or the governments at various levels. And so we’re speaking about community agency the people must be on the driving seat to build a resilient future, to take real climate action and to empower themselves the people are going to empower themselves when the conditions are right, and this starts by building social cohesion and resilience through inclusive approaches to resource management, accountability and ownership, communities must be in a position say this cannot happen in our territory. This can happen in our territory. They must be in charge of what resources are extracted in their territories and how these are extracted. And finally, we have to work to promote restorative justice. In other words, community in Agile data can only be empowered and build resilient future when there is environmental justice.

Those who do the harm the most harm must do the most to write those harms, to correct those harms. They have to pay for the harms done.

We need ecological justice. We need species justice where we understand that we are not alone on this planet. We’re not alone in Niger, there are other beings that we share the environment with, and they must be intergenerational justice. We have to keep in mind that the future we’re talking about belongs to the children yet unborn, and so what we do now must be such as would ensure that they can they’ll have a repaired resilience, strong ecosystems, ecology, systems, a week to thrive. These are some of the, these are the thoughts. 

Let us take a pause here.

Keynote address at they 3rd Niger Delta Climate Conference held at Port Harcourt, Nigeria on 8 July 2025

Halting Ecocide in the Niger Delta

We remind ourselves that genocide is an international crime under the Rome Statutes and is defined as “the deliberate and systemic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) is titled An Environmental Genocide: Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.

The use of Environmental Genocide as the title of the report is weighty and demands that the matter should not be treated with levity. However, as much as we are unhappy about the silence that has engulfed the report, we must applaud the government of Bayelsa State taking the steps, assembling a top-notch team of experts to drive the commission and to produce such an important report. Other states in the Niger Delta should toe the path set by Bayelsa. There is no time to dither on this.

The BSOEC report was published in May 2023 and formally unveiled by the government of Bayelsa State in Yenagoa on 28th October 2024. The report was thereafter presented nationally at Abuja on 30th October 2024. The governor of Bayelsa State presented the report to the president of Nigeria at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on 5th November 2024. The report was widely applauded and endorsed by stakeholders, and this elicited the hope that action would quickly commence towards the implementation of its recommendations.  However, six months after the flurry of activities, not a word, not a perceptible step, has been seen regarding a real response to the report. This is very concerning.

The importance of the BSOEC report to the understanding of the dire situation of the entire Niger Delta cannot be overemphasised. We must never make the mistake of thinking that environmental degradation in one part of the region is a burden only for the directly affected part. The NDAC Manifesto clearly states that the Niger Delta region is one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, and that “adverse activity in one place immediately results in impacts across the entire ecosystem.” Thus, when we speak of environmental genocide in Bayelsa State, we are inevitably speaking of environmental genocide in the entire Niger Delta.

We must not forget that genocide is a deliberate and systemic crime. It does not happen by accident. No, it does not happen by chance. It is deliberate and deeply systemic. The single word for this crime is ecocide. Stop Ecocide International has defined this crime as “unlawful acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

The lived experience of everyone in the Niger Delta is one of being trapped in an environment that has been severely damaged in a deliberate, irresponsible and persistent manner.  Deliberate because the gas flaring, the oil spills and the discharge of produced water into the environment are intentional. Irresponsible because those committing the crimes know they would scarcely be held to account. Persistent because there is an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill into the environment annually right from when the first oil wells came into operation. When we add the other polluting activities such as dumping of hazardous wastes into the environment it becomes incontrovertible that environmental genocide or ecocide is the reality of the Niger Delta.

This is our fourth NDAC gathering having had earlier convening in Uyo, Port Harcourt and Abuja. This edition is held in Bayelsa because this is the epicentre of ecocide in the region, even though all parts of the region are dastardly impacted. The outcome of the Assessment of the Ogoni Environment as conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows clearly the extreme degradation of Ogoniland by hydrocarbons pollution years after active extraction was forced to stop in 1993. Thirty years after the tragic deaths and the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders, there is yet to be a closure on the Ogoni tragedy. The complexity of the clean-up exercise has rendered the region a huge laboratory for studies on how to handle such massive ecocide. Amid this open wound some political forces still only see possibilities of petrodollars and care little about the discounting of lives in the region.

Before the UNEP report there was the Niger Delta Environment Survey (NDES) commissioned by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) but never released to the public. No doubt there was no way to sugarcoat the damage done to our people and the environment and that may have stopped them from releasing the final report. Other reports and books by individuals and civil society organisations show that tragedy of resource exploitation in the region has a trail of tears and blood going back into the past. Indeed, there is a clear overlay of precolonial, colonial and neocolonial exploitation and harms in time and space over the years. We recall the destruction of Akassa in 1895 resulting from the fight by colonial expedition forces to monopolize the palm oil trade.  Forests and lands grabbed and converted to plantations in the colonial equally overlap with parts today being exploited for oil and gas.  

Ororo 1 well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95 in the immediate offshore of Awoye community in Ondo State blew up in a fiery inferno in May 2020 and has been burning and spilling till date. In other words, Ororo 1 oil well has been burning and spilling crude oil for 5 years non-stop with nothing being done to halt the crime.

NDAC aims to ensure that mindless ecological assault does not continue. The key demands made in the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socioecological Justice provide key pathways for halting the environmental genocide that continues to overwhelm the region, and commence the urgent steps for the remediation, restoration of the Niger Delta. Ensuring redress for the decades of unmitigated exploitation, expropriation and human rights abuses requires payment of direct reparations by oil companies before their attempts to divest are considered.

Environmental and health audits of the entire Niger Delta are urgently needed considering the environmental genocide and the brevity of life in the region. The BSOEC called for a restoration fund of $12 billion over 12 years for Bayelsa State. For the entire region about $150 billion will be needed for remediation and restoration efforts over the first 5 years. Besides remediation and restoration, more than that estimated amount would be needed annually as reparations for human and ecological loses occasioned by the clearly deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta environment. This is a tiny amount when we consider that BP paid a bill BP of $61 billion for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact they further set up a settlement of $20.8 billion with the US Department of Justice in 2015 and also set up a compensation fund of $20 billion for other claimants. That was for just one oil spill. We have a situation where spills occur daily, abandoned oil wells continue to drip oil for decades and where a well blowout would be deliberately left burning and spilling for over five years.

Time is running out and delay is a luxury we cannot afford considering the heavy injuries being inflicted on our peoples and environment on a daily basis. It is indeed time for remediation, restoration and reparations.

Welcome words at Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) held on 12th May 2025 at Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

Don’t Play Politics with our Environment

The town hall meeting has been convened to provide a platform for presidential candidates in the upcoming election in Nigeria to discuss their plans and strategies for addressing critical environmental and climate challenges facing the country. We thank the Vice Chancellor of this great university for playing host to this epochal event. We are also highly enthused by the fact that our youths are a majority in the audience. The future belongs to you and the seeds sown by those we elect will determine the level of wellbeing attainable in the coming decades. They could also determine your chances for survival. The subject of this town hall is fundamental for our survival and to living in dignity. 

Without a safe environment the enjoyment of human rights is impossible. The present Nigerian Constitution at Section 20 provides for environmental protection as one of the Fundamental Objectives and directive principles of state policy. It states that states shall protect and improve the environment and safeguard the water, air, forest and wild life of Nigeria. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights expressly states at Article 24 that All peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development. The Charter has been domesticated by Nigeria, thus, provides a basis for the justiciability of our right to a safe environment. 

The reality is that the focus of political leaders on the environment has been largely tokenish. The indicator that they care at all about the environment is often only when they move to destroy underserved and largely autonomous communities termed slums. It is this mindset that led to the destruction of Maroko (which was inhabited by over 300,000 people) in July 1990 and is now threatening Makoko community in Lagos. And sometimes a cosmetic sanitation exercise in which trash gets pulled out of drains and piled by the roadside until they get washed back into the drains. Although there is a designated ecological fund, its use has been characterized as mostly being for political ends.

The Environment Unites

We believe that serious focus on tackling the environmental problems in Nigeria could be a unifying factor in a nation faced with many divisive factors. Every region has significant ecological problems and investment in solving them would reduce the troubling reality of unemployment by providing needed supports to our largely informal economy. Our propensity to invest in mega projects serve more as means of financial extraction rather than meeting real social-economic needs of our people. We celebrate the construction of deep seaports, but do we have any fish port for the millions of our artisanal fishers?

Cross section of participants

Nigeria suffers from huge biodiversity loses. At a time when our farmers should be supported to build a farming system that works with nature, to preserve indigenous seeds and varieties, we are opening to all sorts of genetically engineered seeds and products in a very lax biosafety regulation regime that threatens our biosecurity and food security and ignores the precautionary principle. While the law requires labelling of GMOs as a cardinal requirement for their being permitted into our environment and to our dining tables, our social-cultural context and informal trading systems make labelling an impossibility. Since we cannot label, we should not permit. That is simple logic. Should we sacrifice our health and environmental sustainability, promote monoculture, and disrupt our agricultural systems for seed monopolies and promoters of pesticides, and other harmful inputs?

Environmental sustainability has lost much of its meaning since it is hung mostly on the economic plank which sees the environment as a thing to be exploited or transformed for the extraction of rents often termed foreign exchange earnings. This drive for foreign exchange has allowed rapacious exploitation that has scarred our environment and our peoples, leading to a catastrophic and shameful fall in life expectancy. 

Concepts such as the green economy, blue economy and the like, have been aped without any serious interrogation. These have built the scaffolds for the commodification of nature, exploitation of our people and entrenchment of colonial approaches that deepen poverty and lock in corruption and a lack of accountability. Some of these approaches have led to massive land and sea grabs and raised the potential of sky grabbing and ultimate loss of independence.

Existential Threats

The climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity, Nigerians, more so. The floods of 2022 took the lives of over 600 Nigerians and destroyed infrastructure and over one million homes. Now we have heard warnings about impending floods. This town hall should help us know how the candidates would address this perennial issue that is bound to get worse. Amid floods, Nigerians are battling with water stress and the blockage of water ways by invasive species across the nation.

The trend in political circles has been that Africa must persist in using fossil fuels to drive economic development because Africa has not contributed significantly to the harmful carbon stock in the atmosphere. A supporting argument to this is that renewable energy cannot drive industrialization. Before the conversation begins, let us place on the table that this argument is contestable. The entire nation of Greece was powered with renewable energy for 5 solid hours in October 2022. Overall, the European Union produced 22 percent of its electricity in 2022 from wind and solar power. If we wish to ignore that as a signal that change is coming, let us not ignore the fact that overall, although Europe is investing in fossil fuels infrastructure in Africa, they are taking steps to wean themselves of this same energy source. And, there has been a drop in energy demand as the people become more conscious of the climate crisis.

Will we continue to pollute our environment, extend the situation in the Niger Delta to Gombe, Bauchi, Lagos and elsewhere? Do we consider the fact that without a shift in the clean direction, we stand a chance of becoming the cemetery for internal combustion engines in the coming decade. What will the presidential candidates do to ensure that we don’t end up with stranded assets as the international oil companies divest and skip off with inordinate profits, even as our communities are already stranded. 

We are here to hear from our esteemed presidential candidates. The moderators will likely cover issues of droughts, desertification, deforestation, floods, coastal and gully erosion, oil, and other forms of pollutions. We would also like to know what they would do about the oil/gas well fire that has been raging since April 2020 at Ororo-1 field off the coast of Ondo State. Hopefully, we have a leader that will not keep a blind eye on such blatant ecocide. 

Uncontrolled artisanal mining, including of lithium right here in the Federal Capital, and the disturbing blasting of hills in the outskirts of Abuja for construction materials, pose serious environmental and social-cultural problems.

This town hall is as much a platform for the candidates to inform us of their plans for the environmental sector and a platform to sound a wakeup call to every Nigerian to hold office holders accountable for environmental actions or inaction. We cannot play politics with our environment because it holds the webs of life.

Four Presidential Candidates were in attendance were: Omoyele Sowore of African Action Congress, Dumebi Kachikwu of African Democratic Congress, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso represented by the NNPP Chairman, Prof. Rufa’i Ahmed Alkali and Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party. 

Welcome Address by Nnimmo Bassey, at the Presidential Town Hall on Environment and Climate Change held at the University of Abuja on Tuesday, 7 February 2023. The Town Hall was hosted by the University of Abuja in partnership with Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Corporate Accountability and Popular Participation Africa (CAPPA) and We The People (WTP).

He was a Man of Peace

It is with deep humility that I address this gathering to mark the 79th posthumous birthday of our great leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa. I thank Ogoni Civil Society Stakeholders’ Forum for facilitating this event. 

For some of us Ogoni has become the training ground for environmental justice. It has remained the prime territory for learning how difficult it is to undo ecological harm once it has occurred; once it has been allowed to fester and take root. The Ogoni people have also given us a clear base to understudy the workings of a people-driven non-violent revolt; the challenges, the pitfalls and the triumphs. Ogoni has been a metaphor for ecocide and an inspiration for resistance.

Standing at the centre of the Ogoni experience are a number of personalities one of whom is Ken Saro-Wiwa. His leadership at various levels and platforms left indelible marks on the socio-ecological struggles of the Ogoni people and others. Some of us make regular visits to the polluted sites in Ogoni to remind ourselves that ecocide in any location is a crime against Mother Earth and all our relatives. Ogoni reminds us all that corporate greed can covert a verdant land into a land where humans and other living beings are literally either sick or dead.

The literary output of Ken Saro-Wiwa helped to preserve his thoughts for us and for generations yet unborn.  Needless to say, his bluntness also made him controversial. That can be understood because when you are a minority fighting to breathe, those whose knees are pressed into your neck would claim that as long as you can complain it means you can breathe. In other words, their knees would only be lifted from your neck when you fall silent. Dead. The noose snuffed the physical life from him 25 years ago, but he still speaks. His satirical story, Africa Kills Her Sun[ii], shows how fiction can chisel a message in stone. Writing about how a priest would approach to pray for a person about to be executed, he said: “The priest will pray for our souls. But it’s not us he should be praying for. He should be praying for the living, for those whose lives are a daily torment.” 

His fiction was never altogether fictive. According to one Onookome Okome, “These fictive characters are modelled on social types and local events. This explains why some of these characters provoked great and enthusiastic, albeit sometimes acerbic debate in Nigeria’s literary history.” Okome goes on to say that “his political ideas about the Nigerian Federation were even more controversial. His book on the Nigerian civil war (On A Darkling Plain: An Account of The Nigerian Civil War), carefully conceived around the minority/majority problems of Nigeria’s ethnic groups, aroused heated hate-debate, especially among members of the three largest Nigeria ethnic groups.”[iii]

His focus on bringing the plight of the Ogoni people to the world in the context of the unequal majority-minority relations within the Nigerian state combined with the brutal state capture by notorious transnational oil companies obviously earned him many adversaries, including those who eventually orchestrated his judicial murder along with Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Dobee, Paul Levura, Nordu Eawo, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbokoo, John Kpuinen and Baribor Bera. Their death was both an epitome of the viciousness of an unholy matrimony between a rapacious transnational entity and an autocratic state, and a glaring failure of international diplomacy.[iv]

Saro-Wiwa was conscious of the fact that the consequences of the struggle could be dire, even when prosecuted non-violently. In Silence Would be Treason: Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa, he stated that he signed a death warrant when he “undertook to confront Shell and the Nigerian establishment.” He wrote that if his life was not cut short, he would look forward to “A few more books, maybe, & the opportunity to assist others. In a letter he wrote on 19 June 1995, he stated: “I know they will do everything to resist us and that they may still want me out of the way. I am not careless of my safety, but I do recognise and have always recognised that my cause could lead to death. But as the saying goes, how can man die better/than facing fearful odds/ for the ashes of his fathers/and the temple of his Gods? No, one cannot allow the fear of death to dent one’s beliefs and actions. I only wish there were more Ogoni people on the ground. However, the cause cannot die.”[v]

The matter of having more Ogoni people on the ground to keep the struggle alive remains an active concern; a task that must be done. Yes, the cause has not died, and 27 years after the expulsion of Shell from Ogoni, the oil wells are still not gushing crude. However, the spate of oil pollution remains and the clean-up of the territory although commenced has its speed and mode of delivery highly contested. Having layers of leadership on the ground is essential for any movement. The Ogoni struggle has been kept alive by the deep mobilisations that have gone on over the years and by the clear understanding of the value of their environment and cultural autonomy by the majority of the people. Organisational efforts have floundered and become quite fractious at times, probably due to an alternative notion of sacrifice, superficial commitment to the ideals of the collective. It may well also be driven by impulses of indiscipline and possible conspiracy to subvert the pursuit of the common good. 

The Ogoni Bill of Rights[vi] of November 1990 is a major milestone document, serving to coalesce the pains, dreams and demands of the Ogoni people. It stands as a major decolonial document and was the  precursor of similar pursuits by other ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta, including the Kaiama Declaration of the Ijaws, Ogoni Bill of Rights, lkwerre Rescue Charter, Aklaka Declaration for the Egi, the Urhobo Economic Summit Resolution and the Oron Bill of Rights, amongst others.[vii]

Article 16 of the Ogoni Bill of rights stated that “neglectful environmental pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.” Three decades later, this summation remains accurate, even more poignant.

The Ogoni Bill of Rights spoke of the land turning into an ecological disaster. This position was validated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in their report of the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland.[viii] The report submitted to the Nigerian government in August 2011 revealed extensive pollution of the soil by petroleum hydrocarbons in land areas, swamps and sediments. The effort to remediate the Ogoni environment, as we all know, is handled by HYPREP. 

A recent visit[ix] to some of the remediation sites some weeks ago was quite revealing. Whereas the depth of hydrocarbon pollution was at an alarming 5 metres at the time UNEP conducted its study, the state of affairs has deteriorated over the years. Hydrocarbons pollution was found to have now gone as deep as an alarming 10 metres at Lot 2. One other finding was that 30,000 litres of petrol was recovered from this Lot. We saw a layer of hydrocarbons on the excavated pit at Lot 16, at Korokoro community, besides the tanks of recovered crude that were stored nearby.

The recovery of crude oil from the remediation sites show that without the remediation, the pollution would obviously sink deeper, leaving the disaster more intractable. It also offers a stark warning to oilfield communities that even where the land looks normal, tests need to be done at intervals of time to ensure the integrity of what lies beneath the surface.

November 1990 – when the Ogoni Bill of Rights was issued and November 1995 – when Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other leaders were executed are cardinal milestones in the march for ecological and socio-political justice for the Ogoni people and all marginalised peoples that are victims of destructive extractivism. 

25 years after the judicial murders, the wounds inflicted on the Ogoni people are yet to heal. 25 years after the act, the Nigerian State has still not found the place to formally exonerate the Ogoni leaders and foster healing in the land. 25 years after the macabre act, even the sculpture in honour of the Ogoni 9 lies captive at the Apapa quays in Lagos, Nigeria, held by a system that is afraid to come to terms with an artistic artefact.[x] Who will tell the Nigerian government that arresting and detaining a piece of sculpture in an effort to block the memory of crimes committed by the state is an exercise in futility? 

Ken Saro-Wiwa saw it all. He felt it. He told it. He challenged all. His last public speech or allocutus, stands like a banner at the head of a marching column and we do well to pay attention:

We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.[xi]

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a man ahead of his time. He was a bright light. We all have a duty to ensure that his light shines on. Happy posthumous birthday, great son of Ogoni, Nigeria and Africa.

This was a speech by Nnimmo Bassey at the summit convened by Ogoni Civil Society Stakeholders’ Forum to Mark the 79thposthumous birthday of Ken Saro-Wiwa on 10th October 2020.

Notes

[i] Based on a chapter by Nnimmo Bassey titled Ogoniland: A People-Driven Non-Violent Revolt which will be in a forthcoming book marking the 25th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa,  Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Dobee, Paul Levura, Nordu Eawo, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbokoo, John Kpuinen and Baribor Bera.

[ii] Ken Saro-Wiwa (1989) Africa Kills Her Sun. 

[iii] Onookome Okome (2000). Before I am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa – Literature, Politics and Dissent. Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc.

[iv] Partick Naagbanton (2016). Footprints of Nkpoo Sibara, Dele Giwa and Ken Saro-Wiwa, Vol. 1. Makurdi: DNA Traeces Empire Limited

[v] Íde Corley, Helen Fallon and Laurence Cox, eds (2013). Silence Would be Treason – Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Daraja Press

[vi] Ogoni Bill of Rights (1990). http://www.waado.org/nigerdelta/RightsDeclaration/Ogoni.html

[vii] Nnimmo Bassey. 01 August 2013. Two Years After the UNEP Report – Ogoni Still Groans. http://nnimmo.blogspot.com/2013/08/two-years-after-unep-report-ogoni-still.html  

[viii] UNEP (2011). Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland. https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/disasters-conflicts/where-we-work/nigeria/environmental-assessment-ogoniland-report

[ix] This visit was on Friday 11, September 2020

[x] Susanna Rustin (5 November 2015). Ken Saro-Wiwa memorial art bus denied entry to Nigeria. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/05/ken-saro-wiwa-memorial-art-bus-denied-entry-to-nigeria

[xi] Ken Saro-Wiwa (1995). Trial Speech of Ken Saro-Wiwa. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Trial_Speech_of_Ken_Saro-Wiwa

Jesse Pipeline Fire Tragedy: 22 Years of Silence

Pipelines convey goods from one location to another. For example, pipelines are used to convey water to households in cities and other human communities. They can be used for irrigation purposes and for a variety of purposes.

Today we remember the tragic pipeline fire that occurred at Atiegwo, near Jesse, Delta State, on the 17th day of October 1998 killing over a thousand community persons. The pipeline is a 16-inch petrol pipeline owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and linking the Warri refinery to Kaduna. The fire raged for about five days and was eventually put out by American fire-fighters.[i]

Blaming the Victims

Without any investigation, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the state-owned NNPC and the Military Government alleged that the cause of the inferno was sabotage. However, this charge was not substantiated. The oil companies and then military government were quick to blame the victims. The basins that littered the death scene were interpreted to have been taken there by pipeline vandals to scoop spilled petrol. The military government of General Abdusalam Abubakar declared that no compensation would be paid, and the situation turned into one in which the surviving villagers became feared that they may be prosecuted. The fear led some families to prematurely discharge their relatives from hospitals, a situation that may have led to an increase in fatalities. We repeat, the root cause of the conflagration is yet to be established, 22 years after the tragic incident. 22 years is long enough to bring closure to this unfortunate incident.

A mother who lost her daughter, Eunice, in the inferno had this to say to environmental monitors that visited the scene:

She said she was going to the farm. She left us happy. We were expecting some red cassava for dinner. She never came back. We saw the basin of the cassava. We saw the “karta” (head pad). We recognised our basin and her cloth. Her body we did not see. Her voice we did not hear. The fire took her from us.

They say we are vandals. How? Can Eunice be a vandal? It is the oil people who have been vandalising our means of livelihood. It is the government that has stolen from us and continues to do so even to this minute.[ii]

What Caused the Fire?

Former Chief of Army Staff. Major General David Ejoor (rtd) was particularly piqued by the massacre and addressed the press in very strong terms.[iii] According to him the evidence suggested that oil companies and the government caused the fire. He said that “when the spillage became a general knowledge, the oil companies moved in to cover the cartel that was siphoning petrol from a joint valve near Idjerhe in tankers. Towards daybreak, the saboteurs failed to put the pipes back properly and hence the spillage of petrol.” According to the general, the spilled products got into farmlands as well as into the Ethiope River. This attracted the attention of the community people. “People going to their farms discovered that they were wading in petrol instead of water. There was a rush to fetch the petrol from the farm and the floating petrol in the river.”

Eyewitnesses recounted that five minutes before the fire, there was a Shell Petroleum Development Company helicopter hovering overhead and urging the people to evacuate the scene. Analysts believe that since the victims were mostly Urhobo, if the officer in the helicopter had shouted the information in their language, they would have escaped the tragedy. The interpretation of this is that the employment pattern in the companies is skewed against the oil field communities.

Moreover, General Ejoor stated that after warning the people from the helicopter, “the officials followed up their threat with firing nerve gas at the crowd, which made it impossible for them to run. Those who attempted to run could not move their limbs with agility. The horror came; the place was set on fire with the intention of killing everybody and to prevent anybody from giving evidence.”

Unending Pipeline Fires

Many pipeline fires have been recorded in the Niger Delta. Some can be traced to poor facility management —including the non-replacement of corroded pipelines or those that had reached their optimal lifespans. Most pipelines in Nigeria are designed for a limited lifespan of 20 years.[iv] Other incidents have been traced to vandalism or oil theft. 

Recently the General Manager of the NNPC stated that oil pipelines in Nigeria are all compromised.[v] That is a very troubling situation. It shows that pipelines can leak volatile petroleum products at any time. Another worrying statistic came through when the NNPC stated that there were 45,347 pipeline breakages and/or explosions in Nigeria over the past 18 years. While speaking on this, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, fingered pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft as major challenges for the oil industry for years and attributed this to “poverty in surrounding communities, community-industry expectation mismatch, and corruption.”[vi]

The analysis by the NNPC largely misses the point and heaps the blame on the victims, on the hapless communities. Crude oil theft is big business that requires technical knowledge and equipment, layers of security and other protections within the system to thrive. The theft has been said to be at industrial scale. And, because the country does not really metre or measure the actual amount of crude oil extracted, the measure of the volume of crude being stolen on a daily basis remains in the realm of speculation. 

The Nigerian Extractive Industries Initiative (NEITI) reckoned that Nigeria lost about $42billion to crude oil theft in nine years. According to NEITI, about $38.5 billion was lost to crude theft alone, $1.6 billion on domestic crude and a further $1.8 billion was lost on refined petroleum products.[vii]

Figures that have been bandied range from 200,000 to 400,000,[viii] to 1,000,000 barrels a day. A top government figure once speculated that as much oil as is being officially exported is also being stolen. One thing is clear, the humungous amount of crude oil could not be stolen by poor villagers or even by those engaged in bush refining. Indeed it has been said that oil companies are involved in the business and that the international community is complicit.[ix]

Pipelines in Nigeria have largely been carriers of pipe dreams. Water pipelines are largely dry and those installed to convey crude oil to the refineries run largely empty as the refineries are comatose. 

Lives and the Living

The loss of lives in the inferno of 1998 was, and remains, painful. However, we must not fail to mention that one regular blind spot associated with accidents of this nature is the lack of focus on what happens to the environment as a result of the incident. The environmental assessment of Ogoni by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)[x] clearly illustrated the harms of irresponsible extractive activities in the Niger Delta. The report submitted to the government in 2011 and leading to the establishment of the Hydrocarbons Pollution Remediation project (HYPREP) showed that ground and surface waters in Ogoni were contaminated beyond acceptable levels. Ground water was found to have benzene, a known carcinogen, at 900 times above World Health Organisation standards. In some places, the hydrocarbon pollution had seeped into the ground to a depth of 5 metres. By the time remediation was carried out in 2020, the pollution had sunk down to a depth of 10 metres.

The National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) announced that Nigeria recorded 1,300 oil spills between 2018 and 2019. This amounted to an average of 5 oil spills per day.[xi] Not surprisingly, life expectancy in the Niger Delta is a paltry 41 years compared to an equally embarrassing national average of 55 years. The point we are making is that the living who survive oil fires remain in the grip of deadly pollution and their lives are thus highly discounted. For the living to have a fighting chance of living in dignity, the pollutions from the petroleum extractive activities must urgently be remediated across the Niger Delta.

Farewell to Fossil Fuel Fires 

There have been oil spill and pipeline fires across the Niger Delta over the past decades. The best way to honour the memory of our people that died in the fire of 1998 is to ensure that there is no repeat of such a horrific incident. 

  1. The steps towards achieving this include replacing all pipelines that have outlived their lifespans and are liable to corrode or leak. 
  2. Companies should conduct regular integrity tests on their pipelines.
  3. The companies and government must prioritize the safety of human lives and not be solely concerned with protecting pipelines and crude oil for the sake of petrodollars. 
  4. Free Prior Informed Consent must be obtained from communities before hazardous facilities such as oil/gas pipelines are allowed on their lands and territories.
  5. Where there are existing projects and/or proposed new ones, operating companies must post a reasonable deposit for covering costs of remediation in case of accidents or on the decommissioning of their plants at the end of their lifespans. 
  6. Environmental and social impact assessments must be carried out and fully debated by affected communities before any fossil fuel project is permitted in their communities. 
  7. It is also essential to ensure that pipelines are not laid on the surface and that associated facilities are adequately protected and secured with all. 
  8. Incident reporting and response should be immediate and transparent.
  9. Companies must adhere to the best international standards and end the reign of environmental racism in our lands.
  10. Urgent assessment or audit of the entire Niger Delta environment followed by a thorough remediation of the pollution accumulated over the 6 decades of oil exploitation in the region.

Talking points used at a Symposium hosted (18/10/2020) by Achoja Research Council on 22 Years After the Idjerhe Pipeline Fire Disaster under the theme Farewell to Fossil Fuel Fatalities in Our Lands. 

photo: At the mass grave with Prof G. G.Darah (4th from left).

Notes

[i] Segun Akande (16 February 2018). In 1998, Nigeria’s worst fire outbreak killed 1098 people in Delta State. https://www.pulse.ng/gist/jesse-pipeline-explosion-in-1998-nigerias-worst-fire-outbreak-killed-1098-people-in/cxsd6e9

[ii] ERA (2000). Petroleum pipeline explosion: an avoidable tragedy. Environmental Testimonies

[iii] Causes of the Idjerhe Fire Disaster. http://waado.org/Environment/IdjerheFire/CausesOfFireDisaster.html

[iv] Uzoma Nnadi et al. Lack of Proper Safety Management Systems in Nigeria Oil and Gas Pipelines. https://www.icheme.org/media/8910/xxiv-paper-14.pdf

[v] Nigeria’s Pipeline Networks Completely Compromised, Says Kyari https://tribuneonlineng.com/nigerias-pipeline-networks-completely-compromised-says-kyari/

[vi] Fakojeyo Olalekan (21 January 2020). Pipeline explosion: Over 45,000 incidents recorded in 18 years – NNPChttps://nairametrics.com/2020/01/21/pipeline-explosion-over-45000-incidents-recorded-in-18-years-nnpc/

[vii] Nigeria lost $42 billion to crude oil theft in nine years – NEITI. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/361353-nigeria-lost-42-billion-to-crude-oil-theft-in-nine-years-neiti.html

[viii] Ibid 

[ix] Nnimmo Bassey (2012). To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa, Pambazuka Press, P149

[x] https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/assessment/environmental-assessment-ogoniland-site-factsheets-executive-summary-and-full?_ga=2.152372081.992977037.1602959307-1394307030.1602959307

[xi] NOSDRA: Nigeria records 1,300 oil spills in two years. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/396658-nosdra-nigeria-records-1300-oil-spills-in-two-years.html

An Infectious Bill

EXPLAINER: Why National Assembly still sits after presidential ...In these days of acute suspicion and uncertainty about who may be asymptomatic and who may just be harbouring early stages of COVID-19, sneaking in a Control of Infectious Diseases Bill and attempting to ram it through the legislative process is bound to generate controversies. In a season where  nose masks of various makes are being devised; where the protective wear is quickly becoming a fashion statement among both citizens and top politicians; where public office holders wear medical grade masks and health workers have to make do with whatever they the can find,  it is easy to see why Nigerians are edgy over this bill.

In a situation where the decayed infrastructure of our healthcare system has been exposed by the emergence of coronavirus, citizens are bound to wonder why the House of Representatives should rush a bill through first and second readings without some of the members even laying their eyes on the document. To further underscore the opacity of the process, there was an attempt to push the bill through without subjecting it to public hearing. While the leadership may be right that public hearings are not mandatory in the legislative process, it cannot be denied that it is one of the markers of inclusion, openness and transparency.

The Senate has equally brought up its own bill to tackle the infectious disease problem. The big question is:  why the sudden rush to enact laws on infectious diseases in the midst of a pandemic? Wisdom teaches that critical decisions should be made in conditions of sobriety and careful deliberation and not when law makers are in a panic mode. We can excuse the legislators if they are driven by panic and love for the health of compatriots but if the rush is induced, then the baby may well be acutely premature.

Objections to the bill have come from civil society coalitions, faith-based organisations and the general public. A coalition of civil society groups issued a statement denouncing the bill and stated among others, that the bill poses a threat to human rights and is an abuse of power.  They also asserted that the bill shields officials of the agency for which it is being proposed from being held accountable. An extract from their statement signed by 37 groups, including CISLAC and Amnesty International, is germane here:

“The Control of Infectious Diseases Bill vests overbearing discretionary powers on the Director General of the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC), while making no provision for reviewing and controlling the exercise of such powers. The bill empowers the NCDC to restrict fundamental rights and freedoms at will, and abuse constitutionally established institutions and processes, without any form of accountability. For instance, Section 10 (3) gives the Director General express powers to use force to enter any premises without warrant; Section 19 confers the Director General with powers to prohibit or restrict meetings, gatherings and public entertainments; Section 15(3e) also gives powers to the Director to authorize the destruction and disposal of any structure, goods, water supply, drainage etc. In addition, Section 47(1) confers discretionary powers on the Director General to order any person to undergo vaccination or other prophylaxis. All these powers can be abused for political and economic reasons if not properly checked.
“Section 71 of the bill absolves the Director General, any Health Officer, any Port Health Officer, any police officer or any authorised person of any liability when ‘acting in good faith and with reasonable care.’ The use of ‘good faith and reasonable care’ is ambiguous and subject to misuse, manipulation, and misinterpretation for personal gain. While the threat of infectious diseases may be apparent, measures deployed for their prevention must be within the ambits of the law and must protect citizens from wilful abuse of rights.”

Imagine how quickly the mistrust the public has towards our legislators would be erased if they defer the bills, conduct further research, engage relevant stakeholders and draft bills that go beyond empowering the NCDC and Ministers of Health to ride roughshod over the people in the guise of fighting infectious diseases. To cap that up, they can immediately move the N37 billion budgeted for the “renovation” of the National Assembly to the NCDC for the crucial fight against the pandemic to which they are so committed. How many will say Aye to that proposal?

Responding to criticisms of the bill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives reportedly said, “Since then there has been a barrage of criticisms and accusations, including allegations that the proposed bill is a product of inducement by foreign interests. The bill, which is still a proposal subject to consideration, amendment and improvement, has been assailed as a sinister attempt to turn Nigerians into guinea pigs for medical research while taking away their fundamental human rights.” He went on to add that “none of these allegations is true. Unfortunately, we now live in a time when conspiracy theories have gained such currency that genuine endeavours in the public interest can quickly become mischaracterised and misconstrued to raise the spectre of sinister intent and ominous possibility.”

We indeed live in a season of conspiracy theories, but not all of these theories can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Every theory requires interrogation. The House of Representatives has been accused of being induced by a gift of $10 million from the vaccine buff and noted philanthropist, Bill Gates. While that allegation sounds outlandish, it is known that legislative processes in Nigeria and elsewhere are sometimes influenced by huge cash outlays. Such monies may be characterised as lobbying expenditure even though they exert huge inducement pressures on lawmakers. The origin of the coronavirus has become both a subject of political and scientific controversies. The rush to open up businesses is needed for political ends but fits into the impatience and unwillingness of citizens to remain in a state of lockdown. No action is neutral, it seems. Not even philanthropy, and certainly not economic or medical aid.

Mr Gates has openly stated his interest in massive vaccination of peoples across the world, including by investing in seven anti-COVID-19 vaccine producing factories with the hope that probably two may eventually be approved and would yield incredible cash for his already deep pockets. The pandemic has become a pivot for medical as well as financial speculators. International financial institutions and political blocks have seen the pandemic as a window for shuffling funds, extending their tentacles and building new spheres and modes of control and exploitation. For materials to aid further conversation on this, our report, Who Benefits from Corona – a breakfast with Mr Gates, may be useful.

The honourable members of the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives still have time to redeem themselves from the self-inflicted injury caused by the bills. Nigerians have determined that the bills are pills they will not swallow except they are  tied down hand and foot, with necks in stocks. The pandemic is a disaster because the hazards brought by the coronavirus have met vulnerable populations with no social amenities and no health safety nets. Hospitals still lack basic equipment, including face masks! Some infectious disease hospitals are so decayed you would be right to say that they have not been rehabilitated since the colonial powers set them up over 100 years ago. Some of those facilities are foreboding mud structures that patients approach with extreme trepidation.

Imagine how quickly the mistrust the public has towards our legislators would be erased if they defer the bills, conduct further research, engage relevant stakeholders and draft bills that go beyond empowering the NCDC and Ministers of Health to ride roughshod over the people in the guise of fighting infectious diseases. To cap that up, they can immediately move the N37 billion budgeted for the “renovation” of the National Assembly to the NCDC for the crucial fight against the pandemic to which they are so committed. How many will say Aye to that proposal?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climate Debt Long Overdue

Climate Debt, an overdue debt

You want to know

If and when the Climate Debt will ever be paid

When will the debtors agree there is a bill?

Could be soon‬… ‪Could also be later‬

Don’t you see?

Can’t you yet perceive it?

‪Like the Natural Mystic 🎶 ‬

‪Probably a Climate Lockdown?‬

‪A stormy knockdown to wake us up‬?

‪Why are we so stuck up

Why do we imagine we are so strong ‬

Don’t you see?

Can’t you yet perceive it?

‪By adorning a sunny crown

A tiny virus with Martian suction landing pads

Craves unwary nostrils, mouths and eyes

Made super powers powerless 

Powerless, like in powerless

Don’t you see?

Can’t you yet perceive it?

‪Climate lockdown ‬

‪Could be sooner ‬

No, not later

‪With or without a crooner‬

Do not here mention corona

Don’ you see?

Can you yet still not perceive it?

world map shaped smoke rise form factory chimney
A smoked world

 

 

End of an Illusory Civilisation

 

Nature builds

The end of an Illusory Civilisation was bound to come. The illusion that the petroleum civilisation will last into the foreseeable future has always been a marker that our vision is rather limited. The civilisation has been preserved by our collective myopia. You may call it wilful denial.

It has been easy to ignore the cases of gross ecological harms imposed by petroleum extraction and exploitation on communities and territories simply because the power structures could drown out the voices of the people. Power structures hosted in shiny skyscrapers and expansive statehouses could pretend not to know the gross damage and the rage of inequalities on the streets.

When cyclones, hurricanes, droughts and other extreme weather events wreaked havoc on communities and nations, it was seen as opportunities to eliminate vulnerable communities living in locations preferred as vacation spots by the rich and the well-heeled.

Calls for economic diversification away from dependence on the fossil fuels sector are often seen as insane because the pockets were deemed to be bottomless. People even said that some economies could simply not survive a post petroleum era. They painted pictures of starving, helpless populations who could only be pulled out of misery by revenues yielded by the fossil fuel sector. They saw the sector as the major provider of jobs and the good life.

It was impossible to imagine the possibility of enjoying the good life without energy and power provided by fossil fuels. How would intercontinental travels and highspeed movement on superhighways be undertaken without fossil fuels? How could foods be harvested in one end of the world and eaten the next day at a distant spot on the planet? And how about the flowers harvested in Latin America or Africa and destined for the visual and nasal pleasures of lovers somewhere in Europe or North America? The idea that high-input industrial monoculture agriculture was destroying habitats and biodiversity, harming the planet, promoting wastes and even affecting human health were seen as unavoidable trade-offs in the pursuit of meat, uniform food products and profit.

Then came the special variant of coronavirus and the attendant COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic came with a heightened sense of panic. National borders got closed. Routine international air travels got halted.

Offices, factories and markets got closed. Humans became locked up in their homes or neighbourhoods. Gatherings of more than 20 persons became classified as large gatherings. Sports activities, including famed soccer, cricket, baseball and basketball leagues shuttered down. No big weddings or funerals. The world descended into a season of the unthinkable.

It has never been in doubt that fossil fuels are not renewable resources and that the stocks were finite. Besides the fact that they are wasting resources, it has also been known that burning them was harmful to the climate. The fossil fuel sector invested heavily in sponsoring climate denial as well as blocking real climate actions at both national and global levels. If the monies invested in image laundering and climate change denial had been channelled into clean energy development, the world would have been at a better standing than it is today.

Standing at the climate change precipice, restrained by a pandemic, humans have been literally quarantined and forced to accept the lifestyles that were hitherto unthinkable in their highly sophisticated societies. This would have been a time for neighbours to get to know one another, for communities to forge closer ties, but we have seen highly divisive tendencies. At a point we see communities refusing to allow ship berth at their port for fear of transmission of the virus. Is it not strange that people could tell their compatriots to float away and perish wherever as long as they did not bring a threat of the virus onshore?

Besides the fact that humans are caged by the pandemic, the greater challenge may be that of economic collapse. The economic turmoil, and especially the collapse of crude oil prices, poses a serious challenge to politicians and their corporate sponsors. If the collapse persists, politicians will be forced to change their perception matrix and know that they are elected by the people, not by corporations and that the well-being of the people is more important than the profit margins of corporations.

This oil price slump is a clear warning that even if the prices rebound, the days of the civilisation driven by this sector are truly numbered. It is simple wisdom that to be forewarned is to be fore armed. Moving on bullishly as if nothing is at stake is to blindly drive on to catastrophe. The pandemic has given the world a moment for reflection. Remaining stubborn and unreasonable is not an option.

Art and the Codes of Life

 

With Odia & Eve
Before the sage, Odia Ofeimun, took the stage

Art and the Codes of Life. While humans make history through acts of valiance or of villainy, much of history is preserved through the arts. Official historians may couch history to please the despotic rulers and politicians and may even decree the elimination of history from the educational curriculum, but true history remains largely beyond their reach. Our memory and imagination are the vaults where history is stored and these deserve to be continually nurtured and propagated.

The fact that we have had a checkered history in Nigeria cannot be disputed, but so is the history of every nation. However, we may hold the record of vigorously working to push our history under the carpet so as to obscure the unpalatable stories of those who must remain in the political firmament of the land. We seem to have found a way to decorate villainy, marking such as valiancy or gallantry. Unfortunately, brightly lit or coloured vileness, roguery or even rascality can dazzle and confuse the simple-minded. And, sadly, an obscured past births an obscured future.

Our stories hold the code for rebuilding hope and for rebuilding Nigeria, even the world. We have to decipher the codes of life, recognize our commonalities, know our stories and tell them, defend our memory, build our imagination and march in the direction of solidarity as we fight for socio-ecological justice.

Happily, the arts, by and large, hold the torch to light the way to our past in a way that refuses to be suppressed or obliterated. Poetry, songs, paintings, sculpture, stories, films, architecture and the like, tell our history in a living way. Novels by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Festus Iyayi, Helon Habila, Chimamanda Adichie, Okey Ndibe, Wale Okediran and many others give us clear sketches of  the rough waters of our histories. The poetry of Christopher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, J. P. Clark-Bekederemo, Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, Ogaga Ifowodo, Harry Garuba, Nduka Otiono and several others, brilliantly capture our histories and fearlessly lay out the paths of our times of innocence, colonialism, neocolonialism, kleptocracy, authoritarianism, socio-ecological and financial corruption. They also give us the outlines of hope, as they inevitably sketch the way forward to a preferred future.

We also call to mind, notable sculptors, painters and writers such as Ben Enwonwu, Bruce Onabrokpeya, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo and Uche Okeke who were immersed in the struggle for Nigeria’s political and artistic independence. The vibrancy of their artistic production, discourse and vision, held up brilliant signposts to what could have been. Along with the architectural production of those days, we saw that our built and unbuilt spaces spoke of our hopes and enclosed the innate desires to be authentic in our march into the future.

Writing on the works of Odia Ofeimun, but also focusing on the general fighting spirit of Nigerian writers, Dan Amor captured the roles played by our writers in the historic struggles in the nation: “The traumatic effects of the social upheavals in the mid-sixties, the civil war and its attendant horrors, increased writers’ political commitment. Nigerian creative writers were caught in ambivalence after the war – torn between anguish over the predatory tendencies in human nature, as displayed or exhibited in mutual destruction of lives and property, and the need to reconstruct the society after the catastrophe. But the most significant creative development from the civil war is not merely the exposition of the horrors nor the writers’ anguish from the traumatic results of the war, but their determination to make their work an organic function of the nation’s history.”

What can we say about our music? Musicians raised the flag of highlife and equally sounded the alarm as the nation wavered between hope and despair, between light and darkness and between goodness and near absolute meanness. No matter what anyone may write as the history of Nigeria, the music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti will stand as a testimony of their truthfulness or willful perfidy. Anikulapo-Kuti’s songs, including Beasts of No Nation,  Zombie and Vagabonds in Power speak volumes of the days of infamy in Nigeria.

The long list of artistes that have captured history and placed it out of reach of official deniers or manipulators is long and cannot be covered in this piece. Why do artistes do what they do, even to their own peril?

Some art may be for art’s sake, but to some of us, art aims to achieve particular ends. Even so, we realize that no matter how targeted a work of art may be, it often throws up unexpected additional results. The complexities of the crafts and the richness of memory and imagination necessarily moderate our architecture, sculpture, paintings, poetry, fiction, music and films as they capture our histories in verse, colour, movement or in concrete.

I listened closely to Odia Ofeimun as he spoke on Art and the Environment on 11 June 2019. The key points I distilled from the broad, intricate and rich tapestry of his presentation were that our memory is fed by our senses and that our imagination is developed by what our senses pick up. Our common humanity presents us with codes that teach us how to live together with a sense of order and without hurting each other. Without a sense of order there can be no successful pursuit of social justice. If this is true, as we believe it is, it means that we have either lost the code, our sense of common humanity, imagination or memory.

Evelyn Osagie
Poetry flows from Evelyn Osagie

Stories told in verse or carved in stone hold out mirrors that help us see who we are and grasp the codes of life. They both preserve and promote our memory and our imagination. Who are we? Where have we come from from? Where are we headed? Can we continue in the trajectory of so much insecurity such that  that one cannot walk between his bedroom and kitchen without fear of being kidnapped? How far can a nation go when corruption rises, the more it is fought?

Our stories hold the code for rebuilding hope and for rebuilding Nigeria, even the world. We have to decipher the codes of life, recognize our commonalities, know our stories and tell them, defend our memory, build our imagination and march in the direction of solidarity as we fight for socio-ecological justice.

 

A Poisoned Civilization

roasting.jpgWe live in a Poisoned Civilization. The Planet is on the sick bed. With up to one million species gone extinct and many of the remaining ones under threat, it is clear that things have gone terribly wrong. While it is known that humans are largely responsible for the harms brought on the Planet, we do not seem to care about halting the predatory relationship with other beings, simply because business as usual is so profitable to the drivers of the destruction.

Civilization ought to mean progress, sophistication, advancement and refinement but is that where we are today? If advancement means oppression, militarisation, violence, destruction and a reign of intergenerational injustices, then humans are living in a state of willing delusion. You may call it a state of willing blindness. In an age of threats of the Planet being burnt up, humans stubbornly insist on continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy. In a time when it is clear that species are being wiped out in droves, humans insist that progress means entrenching agricultural modes steeped in poison.

It appears we are stuck on the fatal track because of layers of corporate blindfolds placed over the eyes of policy makers across much of the world. The interrelatedness of lives on the Planet is not a matter for debate. When a part of the web of life is interfered with by humans, other parts get affected. The war against insects gave rise to the production of chemical insecticides. The war against unwanted plants gave rise to the production of herbicides. Profit-driven industrial agriculture continues to poison the species on the Planet and yet the push is to carpet the world with more of the toxic broths.

A recent report by the Inter Governmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that “Rapid expansion and unsustainable management of croplands and grazing lands is the most extensive global direct driver of land degradation, causing significant loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services – food security, water purification, the provision of energy and other contributions of nature essential to people. This has reached ‘critical’ levels in many parts of the world…” The IPBES report also warned that, “With negative impacts on the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, the degradation of the Earth’s land surface through human activities is pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction.”

Science decorated with corporate interests must not be allowed to trump good sense. The fear mongering by proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that we cannot feed ourselves without their dangerous products and that those opposed to their trade are anti-development, anti-science and anti -national interests must be discountenanced as blatant nonsense.

The war on insects is a war on other species. It is known, for example, that much of our food production depends on the agency of insects who facilitate production through pollination. The effect of the use of poisons in agriculture is already known to have greatly decimated the population of bees in the world. It is so bad in some places that farmers have to rent beehives in order to enjoy the services of the creatures and ensure good harvests on their farms.

Today, humans do not only dump insecticides or poisons on croplands, crops are genetically engineered to be insecticides themselves, killing intended and unintended insects. Today, crops are genetically engineered to withstand specific poisons labelled herbicides ostensibly to eliminate the drudgery of weeding on farms, reduce competition with unwanted plants and increase the harvest for farmers and investors. Humans have advanced to the point when extinction is actually being engineered in the laboratory in a technology known as gene drives. The extinction or exterminator technology, for example, aims to deliberately drive or force a genetic trait through entire species in such a way that reproduction ends up yielding off springs of a particular sex, for example and over a period of time wipes out that species. Experiments are being cooked up against mosquitoes and will be unleashed in Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire. No one loves mosquitoes, especially the malaria parasite carrying ones, but these experiments are simply a foot in the door towards teasing out the efficacy of a technology that can easily disrupt ecological balances and can rapidly be weaponized.

Let us return to the horrors of farming with deadly poisons. Landmark legal decisions are being made in the United States of America (USA) over the impact of Bayer-Monsanto’s famous herbicide, Roundup. A few days ago, a jury awarded $2 billion in damages against the company for cancer suffered by a couple who were exposed to the herbicide in that country. Court findings suggested that the presence of glyphosate, a major ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup, in food supply has a link to increased level of more severe cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the USA. In the course of the legal tussle, lawyers showed members of the jury heaps of materials said to show how the manufacturers of the herbicide are  manipulating scientific literature, ghost-writing scientific review papers and getting them published and cited as authoritative by policy making agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of that country. In the midst of the legal fights, the EPA issued a new approval for the deadly herbicide.

Nigerians should be worried about the prevalence of the herbicide, Roundup, in our markets. We should also worry that approvals for field trails of crops genetically engineered to withstand this same herbicide are ongoing in our country. Monsanto-Bayer claims that the chemical is safe when applied as prescribed by them. The right way to apply the chemical includes being suited up as though you were headed for a space flight. With lax industrial practices, our farmers are not following those prescriptions. Even with the best adherence to the prescriptions in the USA, the results are now out that farmers and others that are exposed to the poison are not safe.

The war against weeds is a war that requires delicate consideration. What is termed a weed in one community may actually be food elsewhere. The same applies to pests. Where an insect is a threat to a plant, it may be food for humans and other predators.

Science decorated with corporate interests must not be allowed to trump good sense. The fear mongering by proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that we cannot feed ourselves without their dangerous products and that those opposed to their trade are anti-development, anti-science and anti -national interests must be discountenanced as blatant nonsense. The unfolding guilty verdicts in the courts of the USA should be early warning signs to us all.

We have to wake up and eliminate the poisons from our markets and farms. We must wake up and demand an end to permitting crops engineered to be cultivated with these poisons. It is time to make global peace with the Earth, recognize her rights and that of all other threatened inhabitants. The way to the future must be poison and fossil fuel free and we have to pave the pathways today.